Chapter Seven
Claudia sat at her usual table at the café in Piazza della Minerva . Her thoughts had been straying to Mr Campbell since the previous day. The more she spent time with him, the more she caught glimpses of something else under the mask of an inveterate seducer. Something beautiful, tangled, and complicated. Something she was starting to find a little too intriguing.
Yesterday she had felt his pain as though it had been her own. Iris had said that there had been tragedy in her husband’s family, but she had scarcely suspected something so devastating. She knew well how a violent past could keep on rippling through a person’s life. She had seen it often enough in her shelter. Even when her guests were able to finally build a new existence for themselves, and she met them after years, she knew that at times they were still haunted. Yes, at times they felt like they had never escaped.
It was high time she travelled back to England. The new shelter would be even larger than the first, and even better equipped. There was still so much to do. So much to get absolutely right. And while her guests needed her help and guidance, she was in Rome for something that, considering their dire need, felt like an egoistic pursuit: recovering enough sanity to operate again.
Well, to her surprise, it looked like a bit of sanity was recovered at last. For the first time in what felt like an eternity, the world around her was more than just a lifeless backdrop blurred by her grim thoughts. She had caught herself smiling at the idle gossip coming from the table behind her. Why, she could even enjoy the taste of her coffee—absolutely delicious. And, let’s be honest, she could also feel more than a little excitement at the thought of meeting Mr Campbell again later that day. Who knows, maybe she had him to thank for this small change. Maybe his playful flirting and refusal to be intimidated by her fame reminded her that she was not just a shadow. She was real . And maybe that was the prod she needed to gently make her way back into her world. She closed her eyes, delighting in the sunlight caressing her skin, inhaling the bitter aroma of coffee.
I am alive. I am still here. Despite everything.
There were giggles and a fluttering of fans. She did not open her eyes but caught herself smiling. There was a sharp gasp—the entire café was holding its breath. Then a hand covered her eyes, delicate and warm, and her smile turned into a grin. Mr Campbell’s inebriating fragrance filled her lungs.
‘Aren’t you going to guess who it is?’
‘The swooning gave you away, Mr Campbell.’
‘What a shame.’ He removed his hand and deposited a small basket full of raspberries on the table. It contained a little envelope too. He appeared before her all glowing and golden, his cravat fixed with a sapphire pin which matched his eyes. The sight of him made her eyes water.
Divine .
‘May I sit with you?’
She hesitated.
‘It would be the second time we are seen together here and—’
‘They will just think you’re scolding me for imperilling someone’s virtue.’
‘Will you leave my spoon alone this time?’
‘I solemnly swear.’
‘Very well. Do take a seat.’
He smiled at her so dazzlingly that the fanning at the table behind her intensified. There was a new warmth to his whole demeanour. He was looking at her with undisguised curiosity.
‘These are for yesterday.’ He pushed the basket of raspberries towards her. ‘As a thank you. From my neighbour’s garden.’
‘How nice of them to—’
‘I didn’t ask for permission.’ He grinned. ‘Will you open the note? I had meant to ask your maid to put it on your doorstep. But since we are both here…’
She opened the note. It depicted a rather poorly-drawn cat placing a dead mouse on a doorstep.
I did warn you about being nice to me…
She had to feign a polite smile not to grin like a fool.
‘Why, thanks! Look, I got you something myself. From the Caffè Greco , as promised.’
She placed a substantial package on the table. There was a gasp from the audience, but she barely heard it because Mr Campbell grinned again. A boyish, genuine grin, so bright that it dimmed the sunlight.
Please, stop smiling at me like that.
He leaned forward a little and placed his hand just in front of hers, in the portion of the table sheltered by the bundle of confectionery. Then he pressed the tips of his fingers to hers. A little current flickered and crackled, and they looked at each other. His eyes were warm, comforting like candlelight.
‘What you did yesterday meant a lot to me, you know?’ He said softly, increasing the pressure against her fingers the tiniest bit. ‘I am indebted to you now.’
‘Of course you are not.’ She said quietly, lightly pressing her fingers against his, making him smile. That small contact reverberated across her whole body. ‘My help did not come with strings attached.’
‘I see.’
‘Why would you think otherwise?’
He lifted his index finger the tiniest bit, enough to caress hers in little light strokes.
Oh!
‘I don’t know.’ He inspected her face. His gaze felt heavy and distracting. ‘Everything has a price. Always.’
‘It was a gift.’ She just about managed to say, frowning, and she withdrew her hand a bit.
‘Am I making you uncomfortable?’ He seemed genuinely curious.
‘It would be nice if every time we meet here, we didn’t behave like we had some sort of illicit liaison.’
‘I don’t flatter myself I’d be good enough for you.’ He lowered his voice, and for once he seemed dead-serious. ‘But don’t tell me you don’t feel anything when we are close.’
He trailed his index finger on hers, slowly, and she involuntarily closed her eyes for a moment to savour it.
‘You intrigue me, you know?’ He murmured. A flicker of raw, unadulterated joy leapt and pirouetted in her heart. But the words she had heard about him at the ball, and on other occasions since, doused her excitement.
Mr Campbell has a silver tongue. He’ll charm women into believing exactly what he wants them to believe. He likes to be kept by rich lovers. He’s a male courtesan when there’s money involved. He never does anything for free.
Still, what could he want from her? He may find it amusing to ruffle her feathers, but surely he wouldn’t be so stupid as to try and seduce her, with the risk of alienating her family?
She withdrew her hand and placed it firmly in her lap.
‘I can guarantee there is nothing intriguing about me, Mr Campbell.’
‘Nonsense.’ He leaned forward again. ‘You are known as a wise, benevolent goddess for whom no trouble is too hard to solve. And that you certainly are, don’t get me wrong. I know half this town has trusted your judgement in tricky family matters. Why, Iris and Eric would have been cut off from the whole family had you not brought her brother to see reason. And yesterday as you sat with me you were just that woman. Calm, in command, like all is known to you, and nothing is to be feared. And yet…’
She sat back and crossed her arms a little mockingly.
‘And yet?’
‘And yet there’s a secret, almost desperate rage to you.’ Her jaw dropped a little. ‘ It crackles under your skin like lighting. I felt it when we danced. I catch glimpses of it every day. Why, if I look close enough into your eyes, I can see it even right now.’ He examined her eyes. ‘Where does it come from? Why does nobody else seem to notice that you’re furious? And don’t get me started on the way you kissed me in that carriage...’
She felt the colour leave her cheeks.
‘I’ve been wondering why you would kiss a man like me. Was it because, deep down, wise Lady Claudia likes a bit of trouble just as much as I do?’
He sat back with a smirk, pleased that his questions had visibly hit the mark. She stiffened on her chair and smoothed her dress on her knees.
‘You know a thing or two about women, Mr Campbell.’ She tried to speak calmly. ‘And yet you are surprised that a woman may be a complex being.’
‘Not surprised, darling,’ he corrected her. ‘ Intrigued. ’
He saw right through her. It was scary.
No, it was riveting . It made her feel seen, or rather, exposed . Naked before him.
She flushed. She distractedly picked a raspberry from the basket and brought it to her lips, but his eyes immediately dropped to her mouth. He swallowed. They instinctively sought each other’s gaze, and she knew that she looked just like he did right now.
Flustered. Lips parted. Throat pulsating.
He wanted her. There was no doubt about it whatsoever.
Her mouth went dry. She gripped the edge of the table so tight that her fingers went white.
‘Claudia…’ he said softly, his voice hoarse, dropping the Lady before her name.
It was all it took. Her capacity for rational thought combusted. And in the darkness of her unreason, muffled flashes of light lit up a scene, like lightning behind heavy clouds.
The two of them…skin to skin…ragged breath to ragged breath…each slow, deep thrust stealing a moan of pleasure from her heaving chest…
‘Claudia…darling…what would you say to—’
There was an excited rustling of skirts behind her, and two young girls appeared at her table.
‘I can’t believe it! Lady Claudia, in Rome!’ One of them chirped. ‘You simply must sign our diaries!’
***
What was that just now? Had he really just been about to ask her to go somewhere else, just the two of them, so they could talk in peace?
Talk. Right.
Just because he had never had the slightest interest in the pleasures of the flesh until meeting her, it didn’t mean that he couldn’t recognise desire when he saw it. Lady Claudia desired him. It was beyond doubt. It was mutual, and it was inebriating. It almost made him demented with exhilaration.
The mere sight of her eating had just set aflame a perfectly decent conversation, conjuring perfectly indecent visions.
Lady Claudia feeding him with those fine fingers of hers…her silver eyes tinged with a subtle mockery for his pathetic desires.
As she quietly chatted with the two ladies, he could admire her long neck and statuesque profile, her full breasts pressing against her expensive silks. A diamond necklace cast shimmers all over her bosom. He longed to run a finger on her prominent cheekbones like on a statue’s. To sit closer to her and look into those grey eyes stained with speckles of yellow to determine just which colour they were. Then seek her mouth and—
Lady Claudia warmly embraced the two ladies and they left. She had fully regained her composure now. She even looked at him with the slightest mockery. It only inflamed his visions.
Lady Claudia taunting him…Watching me eat? Really? Is this all it takes to get you so desperate?…His tongue slowly licking her fingers clean…
He had to inhale deeply and look away to conquer the stirring of his body.
‘I hope your curiosity has been satisfied, Mr Campbell.’
‘Not at all,’ he said way too hoarsely. ‘You haven’t answered a single one of my questions.’
‘Because they were all very indiscreet.’
‘But accurate?’
She smiled a subtle smile and did not reply.
‘I am afraid our pleasant tête-à-tête ends here, Mr Campbell. I’d rather not be on the Gazette Internationale for the wrong reasons again tomorrow.’
‘All right, then.’ He sighed. ‘Shall we?’
‘I won’t be walking with you back to the palazzo . By the looks of it, I am having a rather good day today. I am going for a walk.’
‘Let me do a bit of the way with you, then.’
Idiot! Go to her palazzo and bag what you can instead!
The subtlest mockery glinted in her eyes.
‘If you like.’
They set off towards the Pantheon in silence.
‘So,’ he cleared his throat. ‘What does Lady Claudia do on a good day?’
‘She keeps away from handsome gentlemen asking indiscreet questions. And Mr Campbell?’
‘Mr Campbell does plenty of things, none of which are by any standards particularly exciting. He keeps up his Greek, because he doesn’t use it as much as his Latin. He goes to see rare artefacts in little-known collections. And he goes for dinner in the kitchens of the greatest palazzi in Rome. Because he always befriends the staff when he works in a house.’
She laughed huskily.
‘Have you befriended our staff?’
‘Yes. But the cuisine in your palazzo leaves much to be desired.’
She laughed again.
‘It’s true. Cook is awful. But we are so very fond of him. You should bring me with you once, then.’
‘With pleasure. Sampling the most refined cuisines of Europe is one of the perks of the job.’
‘It seems to me that everything about your job is enviable.’ They both looked up as they walked past the Pantheon, enormous like a prehistoric creature looming over a labyrinth of small streets. ‘You get to spend every day surrounded by beautiful things.’
‘I do. I will miss it when I am not doing it anymore.’
‘Oh.’ She stole a glance at him. ‘Are you thinking of leaving your business?’
‘I plan to, yes. I have been looking into shipping ventures…I’d like to buy a vessel and have my own company soon.’
‘How odd that a man would give up ancient statues and golds for…well…certainly less interesting products.’
‘Less interesting, but infinitely more lucrative.’
‘And would that compensate for the loss of an occupation that gives you such pleasure?’
‘Mmm.’ He did not want to talk about it. He didn’t want his lust for wealth to mar that delightful moment.
‘I’d think you are tolerably well-off, Mr Campbell. What is it exactly that you lack?’
‘Now you are prying.’ He instinctively started walking faster. His familiar hunger crawled back out, quickly eating out all the enjoyment he was deriving from that unexpected walk with her. Exactly what he had wanted to avoid. His insatiable craving, his need, it was always there, pooling raw and angry just below the surface.
‘Indulge me, Mr Campbell. You are not the only one who is intrigued, you know?’
Five minutes earlier, the fact that she was interested in him would have made his heart leap with joy. But all he could see now was the gaping chasm between the two of them. Between her standing, her fame, her portentous wealth, and his pathetic, minuscule, angry little self, that had to fight day after day for every inch of the ground he stood on.
‘What is there to say?’ He snapped back. ‘What I have is not enough. Not enough. Not enough at all. ’
‘I do apologise,’ she said calmly. ‘We do not need to talk—’
‘Oh, but you are intrigued by me, Lady Claudia. Very well. Here’s all you need to know. I want to be rich. Obscenely rich. I want it for everything I never had. For every single night I went without eating.’ He could feel it still, the hollowness of his stomach, that sickening need. One would think having enough food on his table would have erased it from his mind. But he had not forgotten it. He would never forget.
He had her turn into a little quiet piazza, and they stopped walking.
‘Mr Campbell, I do apologise—’
‘Do you know what it is like to crave for something so badly that it becomes your very reason of life, that you cannot tell yourself apart from it?’
She shook her head.
‘Every day, every instant of my life, it is like that.’ His hunger blazed through him, cruel and familiar, demolishing every beautiful thing around them, the pastel-coloured facades of the palazzi , the scent of the red geraniums on the balcony just above them. And he was glad that it set it all on fire, because that devastation felt familiar and safe, unlike the troubling delight he felt whenever he was around her.
‘It’s like an insatiable hunger, Lady Claudia. I feel it when I work in your palazzo . I feel it when I work for families like yours. It circles and circles and it is all I can see in the world; nothing makes sense outside of it. You sit there at your desk all respectable, in command, divine, writing words that people take for molten gold. And all the while I perch on the edge of your father’s chair like a gargoyle, like I don’t even have the right to exist in that room. It is almost unbearable, Lady Claudia, wanting to be like you .’
And in that moment he saw it right in front of him. The seed of that hunger, planted in a child’s life that had begun in violence. It was nothing but that very violence, reverberating on in different forms, in the terrible choices the three of them had made, in his self-loathing, in his insatiable lust for fame and approval.
‘The likes of you, they all despise me,’ he rambled on, no longer in control of himself. ‘Why, maybe you despise me yourself! Because I did not stay in my place. Because I studied at Oxford and speak like you and move among people like you. But I am not one of you, am I? I am an intruder. But that will change. It will, I swear. When I have enough—when I am rich—then I won’t care if the whole of Rome finds out just how lowly I was born. That the three of us had to work for a criminal to survive. That my mother was a…Yes, when I succeed—when I succeed at last…I promise…I swear…’
He couldn’t follow his thoughts anymore. His breath was uneven. He was furious, exhausted. He was a monster, a thin, scrawny hyena. Lady Claudia’s diamond necklace, as expensive as his little palazzo , looked like a scornful grin at her neck.
But her eyes were warm and sympathetic. Attentive.
‘Mr Campbell…’ She reached for his arm, but he pulled back.
‘I don’t need your pity!’
‘It’s not pity, Mr Campbell,’ she said patiently.
‘Then why are you looking at me like that? Deep down, you despise me too, don’t you?’
‘ Stop saying that! ’ She growled it out, her eyes narrowed and blazed threateningly for a second. A glimpse of her fury. Then her gaze softened. ‘Please. Please don’t say that, Mr Campbell.’
She reached for his arm again, and this time he did not withdraw.
‘Of course I don’t despise you. That’s—ridiculous. I have just spent my entire morning alone with you, at the risk of my reputation. For no other reason than I enjoy your company.’
Oh…
He opened his mouth to speak, but she interrupted him.
‘I hear what you are saying. I cannot even begin to fathom how hard you and your brothers had to fight to be where you are now. And if amassing that sort of wealth matters so much to you, then I hope you succeed.’ Her voice was warm and comforting. No wonder people trusted her with their secrets. ‘Yes, I hope you get everything you want, Mr Campbell.’ She clasped his hand and squeezed it affectionately. ‘Because you deserve it.’
Her gaze felt like tepid sunlight on his face.
‘Why—thank you.’
They were standing close. So close. It sucked the air out of the world around them. It was just the two of them, completely alone. And in that space, he felt seen in his hunger and his pain. And yet she did not mock him. She did not utter platitudes or try to convince him that wealth was not what mattered, as Eric did. She just accepted it.
‘If—’ she swallowed. ‘If there is anything my family and I can do to help, you just need to ask, you know?’
‘It’s nice of you to offer,’ he said quietly. He traced the outline of her cheekbone. So silky. He had never touched anything like it. ‘But you may recall that your family hates me.’
‘Yes.’ Her eyes were hazy, her eyelids had drooped a bit. Her voice lowered to a whisper as she laced her fingers with his. ‘But I don’t. No, I don’t hate you at all, Mr Campbell.’
Her gaze dropped to his lips. Drowsy. Serene.
His heart spasmed with breathless anticipation.
‘Claudia…’
‘Mmm?’
Think about your plan, you idiot!
‘We should probably part ways now, shouldn’t we?’
He said it softly. So softly that it sounded like an invitation to stay. But she nodded, smiling a little sadly.
‘Yes. Yes, I think we should.’